Our second grandson was born on this day nine years ago, and what a blessing he is in our lives! Each time he finishes a Harry Potter book, he is allowed to watch the movie. His parents are teaching him the timeless truth that the book is almost always better than the movie! Today, he’ll spend his birthday in Harry Potter World, and he has no idea that this is part of the surprise.
His mother and I were texting last night, and she said he thought he was going to a state park to hike and explore, and was so excited about that, and it seemed almost at first as if he was a little disappointed, since he is an outdoor-loving adventure kind of kid. Then, once they got into the park, he said it was the best birthday ever, despite the throngs of people. She reminded me that they are not used to crowds at all beyond their family and the grocery store, so this is a cultural awakening for them. “We are not in any way, shape, or form ‘crowd people,’ ” she texted.
“Tomorrow is going to be different. He won’t be able to contain himself with all the happiness of Harry Potter World,” she added.
We can’t wait to hear all about his birthday with his family in Harry Potter World.
Warning: Photos of dead bobcat in photos at end of post. Do not read further if this makes you uncomfortable. It saddens me, but country living is full of both delights and horrors, and I take the bad with the good.
At 7:52 a.m. yesterday when I pulled into the parking lot at work, I reflected on my morning. Already, I’d seen a dead bobcat, two rabbits (one alive that ran in front of my car, and one dead that didn’t make it when it ran out in front of someone else’s), a squirrel, a large buck and small spotted deer. I’d heard the calls of the Downy Woodpecker, Eastern Phoebe, Blue Jay, Carolina Chickadee, Ruby and Golden-Crowned Kinglets, Carolina Wren, Eastern Bluebird, American Robin, Pine Siskin, Chipping Sparrow, Eastern Towhee, Northern Cardinal, and Orange-Crowned Warbler. I’d walked our three schnoodles and discovered a new scratched-up area in the ground cover along the woods of the driveway, showered, dressed, and had my mushroom coffee and protein shake.
Ollie checks out a new ground scratching
I’d been in the shower when I heard the phone’s text ding. I saw it was my husband, so as soon as I was reasonably dry, I read the text: Please call me before you leave for work.
He told me he thought he’d seen a dead wildcat on the side of the road where the neighbors with the black Suburban live. “Take a look when you drive by, and let me know what you think it is. It might be a bobcat.”
He knew I wouldn’t be able to wait on fixing my hair, clothes, and makeup. So off I went in my robe to see this creature whose fate had been determined somewhere between 10:30 Thursday night and 6:00 Friday morning.
I stopped the car in the road and turned on the flashers, got out with the flashlight, and made pictures. Sure enough, it was a wildcat. Its gut organs had been eaten, but the rest of it was still in fairly good condition for something that was hit by a car going the speed limit on Beeks Road. I didn’t think a car had done this, or at least not the blood and gut part.
I made some pictures to help me in my research and theories about what happened. Imagine: a half-clad, robed wildlife crime investigator out on a rural road before daybreak, wet hair, no makeup, snapping photos of a dead animal carcass. That was me.
I mourned the life of this cat for a moment, despite the fear its kind evokes in me each time I take my dogs for a walk. Moments like these are powerful reminders of why I believe strongly in keeping my dogs on a leash at all times. People think it strange that I live on a family farm in the country on the backside of nowhere and leash my dogs. This is why: bobcats, foxes, coyotes, owls, red-shouldered hawks as large as the Great Horned Owls, rogue dogs, wild boar, cars, venomous snakes, and hunters. Not to mention those who believe that every dog they see off a leash needs rescuing, posting on social media for three days, and then rehoming (a/k/a dognappers who believe they are fully justified). Ours are chipped, but walking unleashed in our neck of the wilderness simply isn’t worth the risk.
I raced back home to pull my Audubon book out and make a 100 percent positive identification on the bobcat. Check.
Then I began the investigation. “Hey, Google. What are a bobcat’s natural enemies?”
Google rarely lets me down. “The most common enemy of bobcats is man, but they also have other predators, including owls, eagles, coyotes, and foxes, mountain lions, and wolves.”
I looked closely at the photos and observed that this bobcat appeared to be in good shape except for the gaping gut hole that had been devoured by something. I also noted an odor that suggested the bobcat had been dead for longer than a couple of hours, even though it wasn’t there the night before. It seemed odd it was in the road smelling of decay already, and not fresh-since-last-night meat. It was also on the edge of the road where it would have likely been hit a number of times by texting drivers who failed to see it in time and move over a little.
A pack of coyotes would have picked this bobcat clean and torn its limbs apart, so I ruled them out. I have never seen a wolf here, and it’s been years since anyone has seen a wild boar on this property. A fox lingered for a passing thought, but one predator emerged as the prime suspect. We have three active culprits, and they’re nocturnal. The Great Horned Owl.
Most people would shake their heads and dismiss this possibility. No way an owl would kill a bobcat.
Here’s a way: a bobcat is struck by a car and crippled but not killed. It languishes for several days in the brush, and finally succumbs to its pain and lack of food or water, probably realizing that whatever animal stumbles across it will consider it a gourmet meal.
I believe it was the Great Horned Owl who watched to see that the bobcat was alive for a time, and then when it knew this creature was too weak to fight back, but probably still alive, it swooped in for the feast. I believe it dragged it to the road for a better angle and strategically placed the stomach organs on the line in the road where the elevation dips back down so it could get to all the good meat in much the same way we invert the yogurt lid to lick the top, and I believe it ate the stomach organs and the eyes.
I believe all of this because I have seen over the years how the Great Horned Owls prefer organs. They eat the heads of rabbits, taking out the brains and leaving the rest. This carcass destruction made sense to me.
I can’t imagine the sheer shame of the bobcat spirit in bobcat heaven, reading the Georgia Rural Wildlife newpaper obituaries about his tragic end:
Robert W. Cat died Friday, November 10, 2023, killed by a Great Horned Owl with a five-foot wingspan. His friends all believed that he was the fiercest of his kind there in rural Georgia but report they had noticed a slip in his swagger in the days preceding his death. His wife reported she had heard rumors he was out running around on her with his sly catlike ways, and moved on just hours following her husband’s death, noting simply, “I hope he was in life number nine. He was a real animal.”
I was attending a Science of Reading webinar with a colleague earlier this week. We’d escaped our windowless office and gone to the local coffee shop, where not only is the coffee stronger, but the WiFi is, too.
In Georgia, we have new legislation regarding Dyslexia and the Science of Reading in our teacher preparation programs. As we prepare for these needed changes, our conversations are frequently centered on various aspects of reading.
One slide of the presenter’s PowerPoint focused on the importance of phonics in early reading programs. My colleague remarked that she remembered phonics from her primary school days. We reminisced for a few moments during the presentation to recall how we became readers.
“Do you know how I learned to read?” I asked her.
I explained. “I wanted to write more than I wanted to read, but I knew I had to read first. I lined up all the crayons so I could see the names of the colors. I knew red. So I copied the crayon label and wrote red in red in the front of all my books. I got in trouble for writing in my books, so I promised to use paper from then on. Next, I moved on to blue and green and yellow and all the Crayola colors, writing the color names and saying them over and over again, matching letters with sounds. This is how I jump-started my own reading and writing before I went to kindergarten.”
As I thought about all the fun I had in those days, I wondered whether a Crayola Phonics program would work today – – all those blends are there with BLue, BRown, and GReen, short vowel red and yellow and long vowel green, diphthong violet, digraph white, and all kinds of combinations that sure kept my interest as I became a colorful writer. Of course, I didn’t know they were short or long vowels or the phonics vocabulary of blends and digraphs, but I learned letters and sounds and how they worked together to form words, and it made sense to me as I unlocked these relationships.
And that made me a writing reader.
It also made me particular about my crayons. We had neighbors whose back yard was on the other side of our back yard, separated only by a row of bamboo. My friend Susie Todd lived there, so we would cut through the bamboo and play at each other’s houses. First, I noticed that she called crayons “crowns,” which disturbed me. I also noticed that she started hoarding my pink whenever we colored. She pressed down too hard, and she broke my crayon. Thank God it was the only one she ever used, but we got into a fight over the broken crayon. We soon moved to a new house, and that was about the year that I moved on to the deluxe box with the sharpener – which I shared with no one.
I also remember the exact day I moved from crayons to a pencil. I walked into Mrs. Easterling’s classroom, where she had turned egg cartons upside down, and in each egg cup she’d stuck one of those fat beginner pencils. These were our shared table pencil holders. We had half-sheets of paper to do our math, which did not come as easily to me. Where sounds, letters, and words were my world, numbers were not. I’m still working on my addition and subtraction facts.
Do you remember your phonics program as an early reader and writer? While the nation moves back to the Science of Reading approach with phonics and phonemic awareness taking center stage as early readers learn the dance, the Crayola crayon box still holds a magical place in my journey as a reader.
After our National Day on Writing event on October 20 on the Courthouse square, I wrote an article for our local newspaper and submitted it. The editor also wrote an article and merged the two pieces together. It appeared yesterday in the Pike County Journal-Reporter, and already we have growing interest in the newest writing group to form in our community – Writing Wild!
I’m so proud to live in a community where local writing groups and literary events thrive. There is now a new Facebook page to help publicize the events. Please follow and like the page – Writing Wild – and say hello! Better yet, come to the Open Mic Writing Out Loud event on December 5 at 1828 Coffee Company in Zebulon, Georgia!
I saw this post online and was fascinated with the charm of this little bird and the fun of saying “featherless lovebird.” It sounds like poetry in and of itself, the way the vowels lilt and the first syllables of each word are accented, just like her name.
I feel compelled to knit her a little winter coat or something and put a warm cap on her head, the kind with the ear covers and a fluff ball at the top. And maybe add a tube of glittery lipstick and some fluttery eyelashes for her Christmas stocking, just for some sparkle. Maybe paint her toenail talons or throw in a pair of thigh-high black leather boots. Surely this little creature must run around freezing all the time. She seems the type who probably crawls in someone’s shirt pocket and marsupializes herself in all that nakedness.
Featherless lovebird?
Like a Mexican Hairless
tiny cat with wings?
According to the numbers on the post, she’s quite the social media attraction!
And it looks like there may be Blondie mugs available, too!
My three Schnoodles and I have been missing our early morning walks without a flashlight. While the vast majority of folks seem to dread returning to standard time, those of us who are of the Benjamin Franklin persuasion – early to bed, early to rise – are grateful for the benefits of better sleep. We fall asleep faster, sleep more deeply with fewer overnight wake-ups in the colder months once we get warm and snug (we leave a window cracked and it’s sheer heaven), and admire the daylight before work.
I took several photos of the boys walking toward the sunrise yesterday. They love getting out and taking in the world through their noses. The scent of leaf and shrub smoke wafted through the air, and it added all those layers of autumn life in the country to our experience to start the day. I learned later yesterday that a 100-acre controlled burn was happening about 25 miles to our south. I wrote a nonet about our walk for this morning’s blog.
I’m giving the mushroom coffee a try. For the next thirty days, I’m seeking to improve my gut health and inflammation with this product. I’m learning of the oat wars and the numbers and types of mushrooms offered in Ryze and the claim feuds between all the mushroom coffee companies over which is better, but I’m hoping that somewhere in all of this I can feel less bloated and experience a relief from lower back and hip pain – common woes of women approaching their 60s.
It’s like that wooden walkway in Jamaica when you finish climbing Dunn’s River Falls where all the vendors in their straw-roofed cabanas are holding the very same items and practically getting in fights with each other if you step closer to one of them than the other or try to take a closer look in one direction. That’s what purchasing this mushroom coffee has felt like- keeping my eyes in one direction, picking one, and leaving the store quickly.
If you have any experience with any of these products, I’d love to know about your journey, because Lord help me if I open the Pandora’s Box of truth on this coffee. Making sense of the hype and sorting out all the benefits is tempered by the voice of experience, and I welcome and value yours!
Common Threads 